The Meaning of Food
An exploration of food’s many roles in our lives…
When conversations about food become controversial, as they often do when new guidance or recommendations are released, it’s usually a sign that we’re trying to make food mean only one thing. In this case: nutrition.
The recent release of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans has reignited familiar debates on protein targets, saturated fats, sustainability, and what constitutes a “healthy” diet. These conversations are important, but they often miss something essential.
Food has never been just fuel.
And if my LinkedIn feed is any indication, that tension is front and center right now.
To truly understand why eating well feels so complicated and why guidance alone so rarely leads to lasting change, we have to zoom out. We need to explore the many meanings of food and acknowledge the different roles it plays in our lives: physiological, mental, emotional, cultural, and even spiritual.
At a fundamental level, food provides the energy and nutrients we need to thrive. What we regularly eat influences everything from our motivation to move, to our sleep quality, to our gut microbiome, to the foods we tend to crave, and even how our bodies metabolize what we eat.
We know that diets rich in whole foods support physical health. Yet many people (and many of our clients) struggle to eat this way consistently. Not because they lack nutrition information (especially today!), but because nutrition is only one of many drivers behind food choices.
If food were purely a logical decision, nutrition guidelines would be enough.
But food choices are shaped by far more than logic, including:
Culture
Lifestyle
Education and socioeconomic factors
The food environment (including the messages we absorb through social media)
Values and ethics
Time available for planning, shopping, and cooking
Our emotional relationship with food
Supporting real dietary change requires people to engage with food differently.
As RDs, one of the most powerful (and underutilized) tools we have is cooking. Helping clients build confidence, skills, and ease in the kitchen allows them to eat more whole foods in ways that actually align with - and even celebrate! - the realities listed above. This can look different from person to person and still be deeply health-supportive.
There are, of course, real barriers to cooking, and I’ll address those in a future post. For now, I wanted to zoom out and to reaffirm the role food plays in our lives and identities, and to name cooking as a missing ingredient in many nutrition conversations.
In my next post, I’ll dig into the most common barriers people face when it comes to cooking—and how we can address them in ways that are realistic, inclusive, and sustainable.